Pinks Lake

In the early days of this month my mum took Tom and I for a hike around Pinks Lake in the Gatineau Hills. At least I thought it was called Pinks Lake since everyone I've ever met calls it that, until I just now looked it up on the Official website and it was written as Pink Lake. Shocking! Maybe only to me though.

Pinks Lake is named after a family that settled there in the early 1800's, it is next to the site of a former mica mine and is emerald green from algae. The bottom 7 meters of it have no oxygen and no life, though there are fish etc.. that live in the top section of it. Most significantly a salt water fish the three-spined stickleback that was trapped in the lake three thousand years ago. Over the course of that time the lake gradually became fresh water and the fish adapted.

Those are the facts, here are the pictures.

This is the deep side where it's harder to see the algae, so it still looks blue. 

 Evidence of recent woodpecker activity. We also saw a few chipmunks and a tiny baby eel. Much to my excitement. It's been a while since I've seen Canadian wildlife.

The ground looked like fairyland because the earth is mixed with mica flakes and glitters as you walk over it. Tom and I did some investigating and found some decent pebble sized mica.  It made me think of a few little ones back in Oz that would have a field day with sparkling walking trails.

The water began to change colour as we got closer to the shallow side. 

More wildlife.

 The transformation to green is complete.

We rushed back around to the beginning of the trail as I had to work in the afternoon. Luckily I didn't miss this huge mushroom growing on the small cliff next to the trail.  Very fairyland.

Last weekend I tagged along for Bub's back to school shopping. It took us to a fancy makeup place and ended up in us all getting a bit spruced up. Not a regular occurrence but very fun. It called for some photos.